“Papa, how funny it should have been tintacks on your chair.”
“What do you mean by ‘funny,’ my boy?” demanded Joshua angrily. “What are you grinning at?”
“I didn’t mean to grin, papa,” said Caleb, turning out his smile as swiftly as if it were a flaring gas-jet. “What I meant was ‘funny’ was that last night Bram had a tintack in his pocket, because he ran it into my leg.”
“Bram had a tintack?” repeated the father.
“Yes, and he was out late last night, and Mrs. Pead was saying outside Bethesda that she’d noticed one of the windows in the chapel was left open all last night.”
Joshua Fuller’s pasty face pulsed and sweated like a boiling beefsteak pudding.
“Where’s Bram now?”
“He’s upstairs in grandmamma’s room, and they were laughing, papa. I thought it funny they should be laughing like that on a Sunday afternoon.”
“You thought it funny, did you?” Joshua growled. “If you don’t look out for yourself, my boy, I’ll thrash you soundly when I’ve finished with your brother.”
“What have I done, papa?” Caleb began to blubber. “I thought you wanted to find out who put the tintacks on the apostles’ chairs.”